This month I did very little reading about careers, decision-making, life design, or ambition. Instead I found myself revisiting some old friends:
Patrick O’Brian — Post Captain; Master & Commander; and HMS Surprise. I think this is my third re-read of these books, but it’s hard to remember. O’Brian writes wonderfully about the ocean, and these books have some exciting plot points, but the enduring interest for me is the friendship between the two men. They are quite different in temperament and each have areas of very strong competence and deep ignorance. They can see one another’s flaws pretty clearly. The friendship that develops over the course of these novels feels like a character in its own right. Their loyalty to one another, as well as the things they attempt to keep private from one another, gives me a lot to chew on. I’ll be re-reading all 21 of these over the coming months, sitting near a woodstove whenever I can.
Pierre Bayard — How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. This is another re-read. I take books seriously and mostly feel sheepish about what I haven’t read. This book shines a light on that feeling and challenges it, with satire but also, maybe, for real. I can’t tell. And that’s one of the points. Is a book you’ve read but misunderstood any more a part of you than a book you’ve heard of, but haven’t read? What about a book you’ve read but forgotten? What about a book you’ve only skimmed? Aren’t we all misunderstanding books, and forgetting books, all the time? And what are we after when we try to compare our experience of a book, however derived, with someone else’s, through talking? Can we ever really be talking about the same thing? I feel, at least temporarily, less flawed for the gaps in my reading, and am a little more cheerful about how universal the experience of Not Reading is.
The 1-Slide Offer by Sterling Gardner and The One-Sentence Persuasion Course by Blair Warren. Two insipid marketing books that I’m not linking to because they don’t really deserve the descriptor “book.”
The Power Broker — by Robert Caro. This is the physically heaviest book I’ve read in a while. I’m not done yet, but by page count the progress I’ve made is equivalent to a book. I’ve made it through childhood, college, early years and into state government service. Right now his eyes are on Long Island for highway and parkland acquisition, and he’s creating a model of state parks that hadn’t been contemplated before. I’ve heard about this book for years and yet I’m still surprised to find myself liking it. I usually avoid biography and history, but I’m pretty riveted.
Various papers on signaling and Perfect Bayes Equilibrium — mostly skimming and Not Reading and asking GPT to summarize readings, but I’ve dipped into some of my economics class suggested reading.
